“Hold him fast, hold him fast!” cried Doris.  “If he only will let you take his likeness you can show the world a thing worth seeing.”

“Will you?” interrupted Pollux turning to Hadrian’s favorite.

“I have never yet been able to keep still for any artist,” said Antinous.  “But I will do any thing you wish to please you.  It only vexes me that you too should join in the chorus with the rest of the world.  Farewell for the present, I must go back to my master.”

As soon as the youth had left the house Doris exclaimed: 

“Whether a work of art is good for any thing or not I can only guess at, but as to what is beautiful that I know as well as any other woman in Alexandria.  If that boy will stand as your model you will produce something that will delight men and turn the heads of the women, and you will be sought after even in a workshop of your own.  Eternal gods! such beauty as that is sublime.  Why are there no means of preserving such a face and such a form from old age and wrinkles?”

“I know the means, mother,” said Pollux, as he went to the door.  “It is called Art:  to her it is given to bestow eternal youth on this mortal Adonis.”

The old woman glanced at her son with pardonable pride, and confirmed his words by an assenting nod.  While she fed her birds, with many coaxing words, and made one which was a special favorite pick crumbs from her lips, the young sculptor was hurrying through the streets with long steps.

He was greeted as he went with many a cross word, and many exclamations rose from the crowd he left behind him, for he pushed his way by the weight of his tall person and his powerful arms, and saw and heard, as he went, little enough of what was going around him.  He thought of Arsinoe, and between whiles of Antinous and of the attitude in which he best might represent him—­whether as hero or god.

In the flower-market, near the Gymnasium, he was for a moment roused from his reverie by a picture which struck him as being unusual and which riveted his gaze, as did every thing exceptional that came under his eyes.  On a very small dark-colored donkey sat a tall, well-dressed slave, who held in his right hand a nosegay of extraordinary size and beauty.  By his side walked a smartly dressed-up man with a splendid wreath, and a comic mask over his face followed by two garden-gods of gigantic stature, and four graceful boys.  In the slave, Pollux at once recognized the servant of Claudius Venator, and he fancied he must have seen the masked gentlemen too before now, but he could not remember where, and did not trouble himself to retrace him in his mind.  At any rate, the rider of the donkey had just heard something he did not like, for he was looking anxiously at his bunch of flowers.